Word.ws English Dictionary

beleaguered

/bɪˈliːɡəd/

beleaguered adjective: besieged; surrounded by enemy troops. Also the simple past and past participle of beleaguer.

Adjective

beleaguered (comparative more beleaguered, superlative most beleaguered)

  1. Besieged; surrounded by enemy troops.
    • a beleaguered stronghold
    • a beleaguered town
  2. (figuratively) Beset by trouble or difficulty.
    • a beleaguered ego
    • a beleaguered identity

Also used as

beleaguered is also the simple past and past participle of beleaguer.

Examples of beleaguered in a sentence

  • a beleaguered real estate market
  • Steven Gerrard was also being forced to drop too deep to offer support to the beleaguered Jay Spearing and Jordan Henderson rather than add attacking potency alongside the Uruguayan.2012 May 5, Phil McNulty, “Chelsea 2-1 Liverpool”, in BBC Sport:
  • Ministers have not ruled out stripping the beleaguered operator of its franchise when it comes up for renewal on October 16.2022 September 21, Mel Holley, “Network News: MPs debate Avanti West Coast future as MD departs”, in RAIL, number 966, page 15, photo...

All 14 example sentences with beleaguered

Antonyms of beleaguered

Forms of beleaguered

comparativemore beleaguered
superlativemost beleaguered

Origin of beleaguered

From beleaguer + -ed.

Questions about beleaguered

What does beleaguered mean?
Beleaguered means besieged; surrounded by enemy troops.
How do you use beleaguered in a sentence?
a beleaguered real estate market
What part of speech is beleaguered?
Beleaguered is an adjective.
How do you pronounce beleaguered?
Beleaguered is pronounced /bɪˈliːɡəd/ (UK).

Words near beleaguered in the dictionary

  1. Beldings
  2. belead
  3. beleading
  4. beleads
  5. beleaguer
  6. beleaguered
  7. beleaguerer
  8. beleaguerers
  9. beleaguering
  10. beleaguerment
  11. beleaguerments

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: beleaguered (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-beleaguered.wav.

Cite this entry: “beleaguered.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/beleaguered. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.